Every morning on the Tube I see TFL's posters with inspirational quotes. I have to give them points for effort -- I like the lengths they go to with culture on the tube, from displaying poetry in ad spaces, to these quotation posters that are extracts from a booklet of quotes for Piccadilly line staff share with passengers.
According to TFL's own press release the booklet "aims to generate a more positive atmosphere during peak times." It apparently also "encourages the many voices of the Tube’s staff to re-enter the environment of the network, bringing some of the personalities which have made it famous to the forefront once more. Coming from a wide range of philosophical, political and historical sources, the quotes provoke thought on life in the city, especially as heard on the London Underground."
My trouble with them though is that they are so safe, and uninteresting. Gandhi. Nelson Mandela. Great men, but who can really argue with them? Although I did actually meet a man recently who thought Gandhi was bad, but that's not really the point.
I appreciate that the quotes are meant to be uplifting, inspiring even, and optimistic -- but wouldn't it be more interesting if they could prompt some discussion? Maybe they want to stay away from provoking debate when people are tired and packed into crowded trains that are frequently dirty and often subject to delays and mechanical failures. Would you really want an argument breaking out in a stifling hot tube carriage when there is nowhere to escape?
At the bottom of the posters is a web site address where you can submit quotes. I amuse myself thinking of inappropriate submissions of quotes from people like the radical Edward Abbey who offered thoughts that should be embroidered on cushions, like “Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.”
And who can forget the timeless wisdom of the great Hunter S. Thompson, the pioneer of "freak power"? It is next to impossible to choose just one quote from the man who felt the same way about disco as he did about herpes, but my favourite is "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro".
The author Chuck Palahniuk is one of my favourites, and he denies that he is a nihilist -- instead saying he is a romantic. Either way, as a former journalist and compulsive blogger, I find this thought fitting: "The best way to waste your life, ... is by taking notes. The easiest way to avoid living is to just watch. Look for the details. Report. Don't participate.”
Also making my fantasy list of submissions would be:
"If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient who considered his work important" Bertrand Russell
"Work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do" Oscar Wilde
Wouldn't these give you something more to think about on your way to work each day? So, share with me your quotes. Not your uplifting and inspiring mantras -- but the unconventional, nihilistic and anarchic that wryly amuse you.
Showing posts with label anarchy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anarchy. Show all posts
Monday, 23 November 2009
Thursday, 25 October 2007
Hayduke Lives!
The Monkey Wrench Gang, by Edward Abbey
I've been a fan of Edward Abbey since I read Desert Solitaire in the summer of 2001, and partly based by dissertation on his perceptions of the wilderness. But while Solitaire is (largely) non-fiction, an autobiographical account of a season Abbey spent living in "the wilderness" of Arches National Park, Utah, The Monkey Wrench Gang is quite different.
The novel follows the adventures of four individuals who band together to take a stand against the establishment -- and are probably the first accounts of eco-sabotage in fiction. In 1975 when it was published it was shocking enough -- in today's political climate, the book would probably never get published. Gary Snyder once said that Hollywood had no problems showing blood, gore and mass murder but that "the gleeful destruction of private property" seemed dangerous un-American. It's no surprise that although rights to the book were bought, no film was ever made.
The prologue to The Monkey Wrench Gang opens with the "gleeful destruction" of a bridge linking Utah to Arizona, and the book then follows events leading towards the act.
Throughout the book, the unlikely misfits together undertake increasingly larger and more ambitious acts of sabotage. Starting with Abbey's own hobby of destroying billboards -- either by arson or with a chainsaw, they upgrade to sabotaging bulldozers, and on to attempting to destroy strip mining operations and later the bridges spanning White Canyon, Narrow Canyon and Dirty Devil Canyon. Their ultimate goal is one that many people -- then and now -- could agree with: the destruction of the Glen Canyon dam.
Abbey wrote at length elsewhere about the "damnation" of the Colorado river, which flooded some of the most beautiful canyons in the US and replaced them with a large, stagnant and increasingly polluted lake. The saboteurs dream of bringing down the dam, and of returning the country to the way it used to be.
Edward Abbey's books have inspired radical environmentalists, like Earth First! -- who following Abbey's anarchist influence insist they are not a group, but individuals following common goals. Similarly, there is the Earth Liberation Front who over the years have taken responsibility for defacing SUVs, destroyed construction equipment, vandalised fast food outlets, burned down apartment complexes before they were built -- and even more, even more extreme acts. The ELF are officially designated a terrorist organisation, and have been know to leave behind the tag "Hayduke Lives!" (after George Washington Hayduke, the protagonist of The Monkey Wrench Gang.
The book makes for slightly uneasy reading today -- even those who feel the text's anti-establishment rallying cry can't help but feel that what happens is perhaps a too close to terrorism. Although the "gang" have a very strict policy of not hurting anyone, in recent years we've all been witness to the actions of extreme groups of people who wish to change the world and influence people through the use of violence. Some of these people are parts of terror organisations, and some are our politicians -- sometimes it can be hard to tell the difference between them. Just the same, it is hard to wholeheartedly support the acts in the book. But it raises the question; what else can be done? What should be done?
Abbey said that sabotage and subversion should be a last resort "when political means fail", but just the same -- he considered it a valid option, and the novel opens with a statement that although the book is "fictional in form" everything in it really happened.
The novel is compelling reading even if it isn't necessarily well-written. Abbey lacked the poetry of Gary Snyder or the style of Thoreau -- but The Monkey Wrench Gang captures a moment in time, and it remains just as relevant today.
I've been a fan of Edward Abbey since I read Desert Solitaire in the summer of 2001, and partly based by dissertation on his perceptions of the wilderness. But while Solitaire is (largely) non-fiction, an autobiographical account of a season Abbey spent living in "the wilderness" of Arches National Park, Utah, The Monkey Wrench Gang is quite different.
The novel follows the adventures of four individuals who band together to take a stand against the establishment -- and are probably the first accounts of eco-sabotage in fiction. In 1975 when it was published it was shocking enough -- in today's political climate, the book would probably never get published. Gary Snyder once said that Hollywood had no problems showing blood, gore and mass murder but that "the gleeful destruction of private property" seemed dangerous un-American. It's no surprise that although rights to the book were bought, no film was ever made.
The prologue to The Monkey Wrench Gang opens with the "gleeful destruction" of a bridge linking Utah to Arizona, and the book then follows events leading towards the act.
Throughout the book, the unlikely misfits together undertake increasingly larger and more ambitious acts of sabotage. Starting with Abbey's own hobby of destroying billboards -- either by arson or with a chainsaw, they upgrade to sabotaging bulldozers, and on to attempting to destroy strip mining operations and later the bridges spanning White Canyon, Narrow Canyon and Dirty Devil Canyon. Their ultimate goal is one that many people -- then and now -- could agree with: the destruction of the Glen Canyon dam.
Abbey wrote at length elsewhere about the "damnation" of the Colorado river, which flooded some of the most beautiful canyons in the US and replaced them with a large, stagnant and increasingly polluted lake. The saboteurs dream of bringing down the dam, and of returning the country to the way it used to be.
Edward Abbey's books have inspired radical environmentalists, like Earth First! -- who following Abbey's anarchist influence insist they are not a group, but individuals following common goals. Similarly, there is the Earth Liberation Front who over the years have taken responsibility for defacing SUVs, destroyed construction equipment, vandalised fast food outlets, burned down apartment complexes before they were built -- and even more, even more extreme acts. The ELF are officially designated a terrorist organisation, and have been know to leave behind the tag "Hayduke Lives!" (after George Washington Hayduke, the protagonist of The Monkey Wrench Gang.
The book makes for slightly uneasy reading today -- even those who feel the text's anti-establishment rallying cry can't help but feel that what happens is perhaps a too close to terrorism. Although the "gang" have a very strict policy of not hurting anyone, in recent years we've all been witness to the actions of extreme groups of people who wish to change the world and influence people through the use of violence. Some of these people are parts of terror organisations, and some are our politicians -- sometimes it can be hard to tell the difference between them. Just the same, it is hard to wholeheartedly support the acts in the book. But it raises the question; what else can be done? What should be done?
Abbey said that sabotage and subversion should be a last resort "when political means fail", but just the same -- he considered it a valid option, and the novel opens with a statement that although the book is "fictional in form" everything in it really happened.
The novel is compelling reading even if it isn't necessarily well-written. Abbey lacked the poetry of Gary Snyder or the style of Thoreau -- but The Monkey Wrench Gang captures a moment in time, and it remains just as relevant today.
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